Breitbart News, an ultraconservative website that has served as a platform for the white nationalist “alt-right” movement, is touting its growing readership and “main street American values” as a reason advertisers should stick with it.

Some marketers, however, are heading for the exits, directing their advertising dollars away from Breitbart amid the publication’s call for a boycott against Kellogg’s (K), which has pulled its ads from the site. That prompted Breitbart to declare “war” on Kellogg’s: Editor-in-Chief Alexander Marlow said on the site that “to blacklist Breitbart News in order to placate left-wing totalitarians is a disgraceful act of cowardice.”

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Other companies saying this week that they’ll pull their ads from Breitbart include Vanguard, 3M (MMM) and AARP, among others.

And there’s another important point to draw from this episode. Ethical media companies don’t mix their advertising and journalistic sides, because they need to make sure there’s no influence on their reporting. Breitbart, however, is very obviously not an ethical media company.

“Reporters don’t behave that way in the U.S., nor should they,” said Lee Wilkins, professor and chair of the department of communications at Wayne State University, who’s an expert in media ethics. “Most journalistic organizations have checks between the people who pay for your news work and the news work itself, so that you are as a journalist protected from those influences.”

She said she views Breitbart as a blog rather than a journalistic organization. “If you aren’t a journalism organization, then those safeguards are never in place.”